


IN ANY OTHER WORLD

by northerndavvn



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-14 10:55:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4561872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerndavvn/pseuds/northerndavvn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You've been outside, right?" the kid asks, eagerly, locking his fingers together against the wood. "Outside the walls, I mean. Of course you have. You're- what? Thirty? Thirty-five? Old, for a scout."</p><p>He feels blood splatter hot against his skin, sees the gruesome mask of fear on one of his classmate's faces- or what was left of her, at least. There wasn't any freedom outside the walls, not for him. Just death. Just nightmares.</p><p>"Fuck off," he says, instead of addressing the question. He heaps more sugar in his coffee.</p><p>A look of consternation creases the kid's face, before he rolls his dark eyes and leans back, tilting the chair on to it's hind legs. "Wow, alright. You don't have to be like that. I just wanted to <em>know. </em>I used to have dreams out it; I never shut up about joining up when I was a kid. My sister used to say I couldn't do it, but who's laughing now?"</p><p><em>Not me, </em>Auruo thinks, tapping the spoon against the rim of his mug, flashing a glare. "Shut the fuck up."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> holy shit im back at it guys
> 
> as always, the auruo and erd that i write about are ones that my partner and i have been roleplaying since about october of 2013, so they will differ drastically from the way others write them. auruo is typically five years older than erd (thirty-one to erd's twenty-six) unless otherwise stated.
> 
> stars out canonverse and will end canonverse. there's no real over reaching story, so feel free to leave AUs in the comments that you'd like to see!

The first time he met him, Auruo fucking hated the kid.

He was young- seventeen, maybe- with gold hair that brushed the tips of his ears and a too-easy smile, dark eyes scrunching up when he grinned. And he was  _tall,_ taller than Auruo, which, really, was a bit insulting. He couldn't be shorter than someone who was younger than he was. 

Harrison had died the week before, crushed to pieces, and Auruo  _ached._ He was twenty-two and he'd known plenty of people that had died, but this was the first time that it had been someone he was  _friends_ with. Harrison's loss felt almost like a physical hurt, and he rubs his chest absently, his customary scowl just a bit strained. His hands curl into fists when he returns them to his lap.

The kid settles down across from him, forearms folded across the table top, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His face was young and open and unlined by loss or pain or fear, and Auruo hated him for it, the feeling curdling hotly in his gut. He smiles and Auruo clenches his teeth; he leans forward and Auruo leans back.

"You've been outside, right?" the kid asks, eagerly, locking his fingers together against the wood. "Outside the walls, I mean. Of course you have. You're- what? Thirty? Thirty-five? Old, for a scout."

He feels blood splatter hot against his skin, sees the gruesome mask of fear on one of his classmate's faces- or what was left of her, at least. There wasn't any freedom outside the walls, not for him. Just death. Just nightmares.

"Fuck off," he says, instead of addressing the question. He heaps more sugar in his coffee.

A look of consternation creases the kid's face, before he rolls his dark eyes and leans back, tilting the chair on to it's hind legs. "Wow, alright. You don't have to be like that. I just wanted to  _know._ I used to have dreams out it; I never shut up about joining up when I was a kid. My sister used to say I couldn't do it, but who's laughing now?"

 _Not me,_ Auruo thinks, tapping the spoon against the rim of his mug, flashing a glare. "Shut the fuck up."

"What's your problem?" The quasi-cheerful chatter stutters off, a frown coloring the kid's expression. "I was just asking questions."

"Listen," he starts propping his chin up on the heel of his hand. "What's your name, kid?"

"Erd. Erd Gin."

"Listen, Gin.  _Shut the fuck up._ I've got a killer headache and I haven't had my coffee and one've my friends died last week. I ain't really in the mood to be baby sittin' some brat who's probably gonna shit his pants the first time he sees a titan, then get eaten."

The stunned expression on the kid's- on  _Erd's-_ face morphs into one of active anger, and he scowls, stormily enough for Auruo to almost be impressed.  _Almost._ "Who do you think you are?" he demands hotly, righting himself in his chair and standing. He even slaps his hand flat against the table for dramatic effect, and Auruo wanted to laugh. "I'm  _not_ going to die, and I'm  _not_ going to shit my pants, either. I'm sorry about your friend, but that doesn't mean you've gotta be a  _dick."_

Auruo takes a long drink from his coffee, then smacks his lips and makes a face. It's hot, but he's long become accustomed to that; worse, it's  _bitter._

"Fuck off," he repeats, reaching for the bowl of sugar once more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hm.

Erd touched him like he's something precious.

Fingertips brush against his skin, barely touching, and kisses tender enough to make him cry fall on his lips. It's scary, the warmth in Erd's eyes when he looks at him, the affection writ across his features. It burns him, the love that he sees there, and how much he wants to reach out and grasp it. 

Instead, he holds his tongue and gasps beneath Erd's mouth on his skin, shuddering as his tongue traces his scars. He tangles his hands in soft blond hair, flinches away from dark eyes; he can't face them, can't see the love he feels reflected in their depths. He chants Erd's name like a prayer, over and over and over, and that's a declaration in and of itself.

 _I love you,_ he never says, but it's writ into the arch of his back, the curl of his toes, the curve of his neck. It's ground into every breath he takes, every smile, every word that roles off his tongue.

Auruo never says it, but Erd knows it anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he was young when he began; he was young at the end.

You don't know when you started loving him, but you know when you stopped.

He died with light in his eyes, a righteous, inexhaustible fury that shone on his face, intermingled with the beginnings of shock and terror. You heard the crunch of his spine as you soared past,  helpless, felt the anguished bellow build at the back of your throat and rattle out of your mouth in the shape of his name.

He was the sun, and you were heliocentric, and without him you were frozen solid.


	4. Chapter 4

Auruo had never been afraid of death.

Even as a child, even before he joined the military, it had been something he'd understood. He remembers watching his mother sit still and lifeless in bed, staring blankly at her hands; his father, instead of chopping wood to burn in the stove, hunkered down on the stump and cradled his face as he heaved great, silent sobs. He remembers when he was eight years old, tugging on his father's sleeve and asking about the child that had swelled and grown in his mother's belly for nine long months.  _Père, where is Clara? Can I see her?_

By now, death was an old friend, constantly hovering over his shoulder and breathing down his neck. On dark, lonely nights, it cradled his face in clammy hands and conjured memories that brought tears to his eyes, singing macabre lullabies all the while, and Auruo had no choice but to swallow back the bitter lump in his throat and carry on.

He was a soldier, and death was simply the thing that made life so precious.

He had been, in theory, prepared to lose any of his friends at any given time. They knew the risks. They were all just as familiar with the end as he.

That doesn't mean he had expected the sudden breathless feeling as he watches Erd fall, or the tight clench in his belly when he sees the blood that paints the grass. He'd never- he thought he'd been prepared, but that doesn't mean he'd been _prepared._

"No." It's a quiet word, involuntary; his knees seem to give out as soon as he lands and he knows it's not safe, can hear Petra's shrill voice and the hoarseness in Gunter's words as they yell at him, tell him to get back up in the air and carry on, but he _can't_. Erd smiles at him through bloody teeth and Auruo flops to the ground beside him, gently pulling his head into his lap and freeing his hair of his leather tie.

"I don't know what to say," he rasps after a long beat of silence, and Erd huffs out a wet, wheezy sound that might have been laughter. F _ive broken ribs, fractured leg, possibly a punctured lung. He's got no chance._ "I- I always thought we'd have more time…"

"Auruo." With what must have been monumental effort, Erd lifts one of his hands and tangles their fingers together, his movements slow and clumsy. "I'm just going to sleep. It's alright."

He swallows thickly and he can feel the heat behind his eyes, but he won't cry- can't cry, not here, not now. There will be time for mourning later. "I'm not going to leave you."

"I know." Another bloody smile, macabre in its sincerity. "Sing me to sleep?"

He hesitates, then nods jerkily. It's not pretty by any stretch of the imagination- his voice is hoarse and uneven and it cracks with grief- but it seems to bring Erd some measure of peace, because he sighs and closes his eyes, squeezing Auruo's hand. " _Little child, be not afraid; the rain pounds harsh against the glass…"_

By the time he's nearly finished, voice near unrecognizable, Erd is still in his grasp, unmoving, his chest no longer rising with wet, labored breaths. The scruff on his chin is splattered with blood from when he had coughed, and Auruo strokes his thumb over his cheek as if he might break.

_"Everything's fine in the morning, the rain'll be gone in the morning, but I'll still be here in the morning…"_


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the world, as seen in shades of gold.

Auruo perceived the universe as different shades of one color. The honey of Petra's eyes; Erd's long hair, and how it reminded him of fresh straw; the dirt that browned his father's hands, smelling of clay and tilled earth. in the end, it all boiled down to gold.

The sun rose burnt orange outside the walls, casting pale yellow light across the room- it set in much the same coffee was dark, dark enough to look almost black, except when the light hit it in just the right way to send amber spiraling through it. The ginger of Petra's hair; his mother's warm skin, tanned by days in the sun.

Everything important was gold.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> waking up in the fog, the dust and the pain  
> and of the sunny days, no traces remain  
> how could you be the one if you sail away  
> without you I can't stand the sound of the rain

_L'élite._ They were immortal. They were a team.

They were a team, parts of a whole, and they all shone more brightly together than they ever would apart. Well- they were forever dim, now, half of their numbers missing.

There were no bodies to burn; a clean up op had been to dangerous to risk, with titans still about, and so many had been lost already. Instead, they burned empty pyres. Petra's hand was warm in his as he stared at the flickering flames, brow smooth and mouth drawn into a tiny frown.

He thought he might have loved her, once.

Any inkling of those feelings are gone as surely as a plume of smoke in open air, though, when he thinks of what he's lost- of Erd, mostly, but of Gunter, too. They were a _team_. How could they function without their other half?

How could he function without his heart?

He does not cry, not really; his throat feels tight and the backs of his eyes burn with what could have been tears or woodsmoke, but he does not cry. There are no dramatic, heart-wrenching sobs or silent weeping, just a quiet realization and a sort of nagging voice in the back of his head, going, _I told you so._

They'd talked about this many times, in the quiet hours of night while they rested on the cusp of sleep, but Auruo had never thought it'd actually happen. Erd's death had been unfathomable to him, then, and even now it still seemed like a sort of nightmare, a cruel cosmic joke played on him by the gods. He kept expecting to hear his voice in his ear, warm arms around his waist.

It's dark when Petra tugs on his hand, peers up at him with honey brown eyes red-rimmed from crying, her mouth quirked in an empty sort of smile. Erd still isn't there, and his heart skips a beat as they turn to leave.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> your boy is a soldier  
> and his mouth tastes like  
> fear and blood, dust, fire,  
> home  
> and battlefield

Auruo had never known when to shut his big mouth.

Be it during a family dinner, or out in the field, or even in bed, he lacked a filter between his brain and his mouth. Like now, for example.

"You're so _stupid_ ," he grumbles, even as Erd is trailing fluttery, open-mouthed kisses down his neck and along his collar. His own hands worked almost frantically at the other man's buttons, fingers fumbling clumsily. "You could've gotten yourself killed, an' then where would we be?"

Erd pauses in his ministrations- just minutely, barely noticeable- but Auruo takes the split-second hesitation to thread his fingers into silky golden locks, tugging just so that the taller man growls in the back of his throat and nips at the soft skin of his clavicle.

Even this does not stop him, but when Auruo speaks again, his voice is tighter, more strained, broken by breathy little groans. "Instead've gettin' off with me, you could just as easily've been some unidentified, bloody mess in a titan's belly, or- or—"

There's the sharp sound of air being inhaled through clenched teeth and Erd rolls over, the loss of his warm weight startling Auruo into opening his eyes. "Where're you goin'?"

The blond peers over his shoulder as he buttons up his shirt, looking rather disgruntled as he does so. "To bed," he says firmly, doing his last button three away from his throat. Auruo eyes the bared skin with hungry eyes. "I'll come back when you're done being ridiculous."

Auruo scoffs and rolls onto his back, glaring hard at the ceiling as Erd straightens himself out and closes the door softly behind him. He's still hard, almost painfully so, but he's angry, too, and spends a while just laying there and stewing before sneaking a hand down his pants.

The room feels a lot colder alone.

* * *

He drags himself to the mess next morning late, only half-awake with an almost violent craving for coffee. He feels daring, takes it with only creamer and no sugar, for once, and smacks his lips and scrunches up his nose at the taste.

The room is almost empty by the time he gets up to leave, and he's so out of it that he doesn't notice the other occupant rise from their chair. A hand catches Auruo's shoulder and he makes a sleepy, surprised sound in the back of his throat as he's spun around and pushed back so the backs of his thighs press into the edge of a table.

Fingers hook into his beltloops and pull his hips forward; a light kiss is pressed to the underside of his jaw as if in apology. "Erd," he murmurs, thumbs rubbing circles just behind the other man's ears, eliciting something like a purr.

"Shut _up_." The words are rough, impulsive, and Erd rubs his chin against Auruo's collarbone with a grin. The smaller man winces, digs his fingers into his parter's scalp; fucking _beard burn_. But Erd only laughs, kisses the irritated skin as he fumbles with the buttons on Auruo's pants.

Auruo whines as Erd palms his half-hard dick through his underwear, lets his head loll back as his hips twitch up into the touch. "If we're gonna do this," he grumbles, a tad breathlessly. Erd hums, runs his fingers down the fine line of hair that trails from Auruo's bellybutton down past the waistband of his pants, "We're gonna do it on a bed."

* * *

This is a bit what he always figured being in love might have been like.

Sharing secret smiles and the covert brush of fingers, hushed whispers in the night, the warm feeling of togetherness. Auruo enjoys the feeling of waking up with Erd's arm tight around his waist, little puffs of breath against the nape of his neck.

It's all very soothing.

"Why do you do it?" Erd asks one night. They're both awake, nowhere near sleep, though it had been quiet for some hours. Auruo is only paying half-attention, still thinking anxiously over the day's events, thumb rubbing absently across the back of Erd's hand.

"Do what?" he asks, voice barely above a whisper.

It's quiet for a moment, and when he speaks again, his words are carefully chosen. "Babble. You blurt out words, sometimes, like you won't get another chance to, even at the worst times."

Auruo sighs, smothers a smile in the pillow and closes his eyes against the dim moonlight. "Because I'm scared," he says honestly. "I don't wanna leave anythin' unsaid, not when we could die every time we leave the walls."

"Not this again," Erd almost groans, but there's a lightness to his voice that makes Auruo stifle a chuckle, a bit of the tension leaving his shoulders. The taller man leaves a kiss on the soft skin of his neck, nuzzling his chilly nose just behind Auruo's ear, who shivers and swats at him with a laugh.

"Budge off, asshole," he huffs out, though there's no real malice in his words.

"Go to sleep, Auruo," comes the gentle reply. "We've got work to do tomorrow."


End file.
